As an entrepreneur, product designer and product manager for people management and predictive analytics software, I have seen a number of problems related to creating useful products, and getting things done. I decided to keep track of some common scenarios. All views are mine. Not my employers'.

Sunday, May 27, 2012

Selling Simple Things To People Who Care About What You Do

Last summer I created some android app prototypes and posted videos of them on my blog. I got a lot of requests for the project files from students in Europe to mobile enthusiastis in India. Some of them were even willing to pay. I did not want to spend a ton of time to charge them a few dollars. So I sent the file to them for free and sometimes ignored the requests, due to lack of time.

@Chirag_Mehta mentioned a service called Gumroad to me. I tried it out and it is pretty cool. The designer of Gumroad gets it. If people are following you on Twitter, they already see value in what you share. So there is no need to market to them the traditional way. All Gumroad needs to provide is a simple friction-less transaction for sellers and buyers of small digital goods such as pieces of source code, a photograph, or a small piece of digital art.

If you have a piece of digital content that you think might be useful for others, go ahead and sell it. I will pay if I find it useful. So will others. The possibilities are endless. You may have a good PowerPoint template for presentations, an illustration that you created for a demo, an excel macro you put together to calculate something, an icon you created for an app, a photo you took, a research article you wrote about a topic, an industry or a company.